Five apps to help keep your kids safe online

Introduction

I don't have any children of my own, but friends routinely ask me whether I know of any good apps to keep their kids safe while online. Here are five parental control applications you might find helpful.

K9 Web Protection

K9 Web Protection is a free utility that's designed to regulate the way your Internet connection can be used. You can restrict access times, block Web sites, and filter Internet access by URL keywords. There is also an option to view Internet usage history.

K9 Web Protection

One nice feature is that you can control what happens when someone attempts to access a Web site you have blocked. For example, you can play a sound (so that a parent will hear an alert if access is attempted), and there is even an option to completely shut down Internet access for a period of time if someone repeatedly tries to access blocked sites.

Before you can install the software, you have to request a free license key. The license request process can be initiated through the installation wizard.

Family Cyber Alert

Family Cyber Alert is another app that's designed to block access to questionable Web sites and to monitor online activity. It records every keystroke and maintains separate logs of Web sites visited, emails sent, files accessed, and instant messages. You can also configure it to automatically record screen captures of the session, and those screen captures can be stitched together into a video of the session.

Family Cyber Alert

One big complaint about this software is that there is no easy way to uninstall it. The software can be uninstalled only from the command line (and you need a password to do it). The idea is to prevent tampering, but there's really no such thing as a tamperproof parental control application. Operating system features such as Safe Mode make it possible to alter and/or disable most any parental control application.

Anti-Porn

Anti-Porn is designed to prevent access to Internet porn. It's set up a lot like a spam filter: You can adjust the sensitivity, create whitelists and blacklists, and filter keywords. It can periodically grab screen captures of online activity and save them to a log for later review. There is also an option to control the total amount of time the Internet is accessible each day.

Anti-Porn

During testing, Anti-Porn seemed to be more effective than many of the other parental control applications, at least as default configurations are concerned. But I ran across one feature that's a bit of a nuisance. Anti-Porn is designed to protect children's eyesight by shutting down the monitor for 15 minutes every 45 minutes. Although this feature can be disabled, it is enabled by default.

ParentalControl Bar

ParentalControl Bar

What sets this utility apart from some of the others is that it is integrated into an easy-to-use browser bar.

ParentalControl Bar

You can provide ParentalControl Bar with a list of sites to block, but here is also a generic filter for blocking adult content even if a site isn't currently on the blocked list. Unfortunately, the filtering mechanism doesn't seem to work all that well. In testing this product, I didn't explicitly block any site, but I did configure the filter to block adult content. After doing so, I was able to access several adult sites without any problem. Ironically, the utility blocked access to MSN because the site was unlabeled.

CyberPatrol Parental Controls

CyberPatrol Parental Controls is one of the better parental control apps. Like most of the others on this list, it is designed to block access to objectionable Web sites, and it provides activity logging and real-time activity monitoring.

CyberPatrol Parental Controls

CyberPatrol Parental Controls also allows you to create different profiles for different age groups. For example, you can configure one set of restrictions for children and another set for teens.

CyberPatrol Parental Controls

Another thing I liked about this app is that it doesn't focus solely on porn. You can use it to allow or block other types of potentially objectionable content as well, such as those containing violence or hate speech.

Family Cyber Alert

Family Cyber Alert is another app that's designed to block access to questionable Web sites and to monitor online activity. It records every keystroke and maintains separate logs of Web sites visited, emails sent, files accessed, and instant messages. You can also configure it to automatically record screen captures of the session, and those screen captures can be stitched together into a video of the session.